eXistenZ

Less a virtual-reality thriller than a riff on the riddle of ”reality” itself, David Cronenberg’s latest is typically icky and unusually witty. Leigh is a VR game designer with a price on her head, and Law is a corporate dork she takes on as a bodyguard/playmate. The director’s obsession with tracing the labyrinths of consciousness comes at the expense of character development, but the psychological depths Cronenberg reaches are tingling to fathom.

Reel goodies

(0:20) Willem Dafoe turns up, sleek and freaky, as a grease monkey named Gas.

The last detail

Here, Cronenberg is working from his own original material for the first time since 1983’s Videodrome. B+